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High court zeroes in on health care

Members of the Supreme Court will have to decide which health care issues they will hear. |
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“It is indisputable that the states were intended to be part of the constitutional system of checks and balances,” Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli wrote in its petition.

Medicaid

The group of 26 states is asking the court to consider whether the health law’s expansion of the Medicaid program is an unconstitutional commandeering of the states. The law requires the states to allow residents who earn up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level into Medicaid, instead of just 100 percent. The law says states must expand or leave Medicaid.

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The states argue that the expansion leaves them no real choice because leaving Medicaid would be politically difficult. So far, none of the lower courts have sided with the states on the Medicaid argument. They say that just because it would be a tough choice doesn’t mean there is no choice. Several states have challenged Medicaid changes in the past, but all of them have failed.

“It will be very hard for them to prove it at the Supreme Court,” said Ilya Somin, a George Mason University associate professor of law who has written briefs against the law’s constitutionality.

Employer mandate

Liberty University and the states are asking the court to rule on whether the law’s employer coverage requirements are constitutional. The states argue that the federal government is illegally interfering in state business by requiring businesses with more than 50 full-time workers to provide health coverage or pay a fine, and Liberty argues that employee-employer relationships are private.

Most legal experts say the court has significant precedents in regulating employers and the benefits they provide, suggesting the court is unlikely to take up the issues brought up by Liberty and the states.

Liberty University has also said it has religious objections to the requirements to “associate” with private insurers that cover abortions.

“The Court has never permitted such an intrusion into the private relationship between employer and employee under the guise of regulating interstate commerce,” Liberty University lawyers wrote in their petition.

The states say the health law treats them just like any other employer, an interference with the 10th Amendment.

In the health law, “states are treated no differently from any other employer. Those provisions dramatically interfere with state sovereignty and violate the 10th Amendment,” the states wrote in their petition.

Kennedy, the so called 'swing vote' who sides with the conservative wing at leastt 75% of the time, will strip millions of health care and won't lose a millisecond of sleep over it. However, Scakito, Thomas and Robaerts will lose days worth of sleep, seeing as they'll be so busy celebrating their decision to bankrupt millions and orally gratify the insurance lobby.

I find it disgusting that some people actually support the government forcing people to buy a product in the hopes that it will lower the price for all. By that rationale, shouldn't the government force everyone to buy a home to control their prices. How about ordering everyone to buy a US made car to keep the prices down? Since we actually have a right to bear arms, shouldn't the government force us to buy US made firearms so that everyone has equal access to that right? By allowing the government to force the people to buy any product, they create a slippery slope that is too easily abused.

This article is truly a bunch of hot air.....much talk, but not much thoughtful discussion as to WHY the judges should or should not strike the law down. Bottom line: The court WILL strike Obamacare down by the usual 5:4 Conservative majority, and you can take THAT to the bank!

HCR is fatally flawed because it relies on the corrupt, for-profit health insurance industry to solve a CATASTROPHIC CRISIS! If the individual mandate is struck and insurer's can continue to deny coverage to those most desperate for it (pre-existing conditions), perhaps there will finally be enough outrage to create a public option. One can only hope.

POLITICO: Thanks for a thoughtful article regarding an URGENT POLITICAL TOPIC that really needs some serious discussion. The great success for the Dems regardless is that they have cemented the issue via the law into the forefront of the American conciousness and it will remain the source of vicious debate until we find a way to care for all our citizens regardless of their ability to pay.

The individual mandate will surely be heard by the Supreme Court. But when? The Anti-Injunction Act is new and interesting to me. It might be that the Supreme Court finds the AIA relevant and may postpone dealing with the individual mandate issue until 2014.

Whichever year the Supreme Court takes up the issue, it is hard to imagine states, like Massachusetts, will be allowed individual mandates but our federal government won't be. I don't think the Supreme Court members will move to weaken our union and the very government of which they form a part.

It is not a good reflection on Liberty University, a supposedly Christian college, that it is seeking to get out of providing health care coverage to its employees. (I guess the university lawyers can always say: "It's not that the university is against caring for its employees, it's the principle of the matter that we contend, that's all.")

I'm not sure if Jennifer Haberkorn or some other person prepared the headline: High Court Homes In on Healthcare, but the High Court never HOMES in on anything. It does occasionally HONE in on some subjects to betterh examine them.

I'm not sure if Jennifer Haberkorn or some other person prepared the headline: High Court Homes In on Healthcare, but the High Court never HOMES in on anything. It does occasionally HONE in on some subjects to betterh examine them.

Yes lets get rid of the individual mandate and then get rid of the mandate for buying drug insurance for medicare subscribers from corrupt insurance companies . Then we can let states, municipalities and the federal government go to single payor choice, like we do with medicaid and medicare. We are spending 20-30 billion too much for the drug benefit now. If we go to the single payor we save over $2,000 per family per year. A real win-win.

Well, when calling out "obtuseness", those in glass houses shouldn't really throw stones, should they?

I'd love for you to explain to me how "efficient" (read; profit motive) the health insurance industry has demonstrated itself to be when it comes to dealing with unprofitable folks like those with expensive pre-existing conditions. Ohhh, they're efficient alright, if you define "efficiency" as denying customers with pre-existing conditions the ability to purchase their product. The insurance companies' business model is to let the uninsured die penniless after they've exhausted all their funds, sold their homes, cars, etc....then let the government (you and me) pick up the tab for the balance. Yeah, very efficient.....for health insurance company shareholders, that is.

The insurance companies' business model is to let the uninsured die penniless after they've exhausted all their funds, sold their homes, cars, etc....then let the government (you and me) pick up the tab for the balance. Yeah, very efficient.....for health insurance company shareholders, that is.

I anticipate Obama dusting off the 1914 Woodrow Wilson court packing plan, which was refitted by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937.

They used the same arguments back then that the same Leftist talking point mantra is using now. Only now, I suspect that after nearly a century of Leftist ideologies force fed to the generations of this nation, it will have a more compliant public for its .

After all, the American socialists have perfected the art of personality cults today...trained by their lackeys in the media and Hollywood.

Too bad we no longer have an independent and objective media to remind us of the dangers (as did even Progressives editors like Wm. A. White) of the:

"elaborate stage play to flatter the people by a simulation of frankness while denying Americans their democratic rights and discussions by suave avoidance - these are not the traits of a democratic leader"